First Day at the Barracks

15th May

This is the 1^st day of my posting in the Barracks which I have been lamenting about.

Journey as followed:

Walk down the barker hill – 5 min

Wait for bus – 5 min

To Central Stn- 15 min

Wait for train – 5 min

Train journey – 45 min ($8.80 for return ticket)

Walk into the hospital – 30 min or more (damn long….. at once I tot I cldn’t make it)

In total around 2 hours

Therefore I’m trying to skip the last walking part, so hopefully I can hitch a ride fr my batchmate who drives there from his nearby home. I juz need help for the agonizing walking part.

It is a totally new experience. Basically it is a well equip hospital (supply more than demand), maybe 3-4 times bigger than a normal Klinik Kesihatan. It has a physio gym, normal gym, clinics, hydrotherapy pool, approx 20 bed ward, basic patho lab, cafeteria, OT, imaging, and places that I have yet to venture.

Depression is a main problem, mostly from the stress to perform (or mayb social reasons). Can you imagine, their dream is to get deploy to overseas to serve their country. (eg, mid east or Afghanistan) so if u r not fit/sick, u can’t get deploy but u can’t get anywhere either….sad right. I would say that the staff are generally very friendly. So this is the hospital that you see pple in army uniform walking around. Not a busy hospital though. I would expect myself to have more hands on experience over here. Such as today, a army staff volunteer to get his blood drawn by us. Prick by each of us at both hands. But still we fail badly……… (I felt so guilty after that, I rather have myself pricked, but the paramedics said that we can’t do that due to some regulation) luckily the para is a very nice & encouraging guy. HOPEFULLY TOMORROW WILL BE A BETTER DAY ; P possibly, we have the chance to go to to the office in other place to see wat the army does in the normal day. Dr ML ( our course supervisor) said that we may get a chance to go to queensland to experience the Army“Drill” of managing emergencies/crisis like Tsunami exercise. Lotsa army fr diff places will gather there ( eg. US)